Early Adventures in the New Zealand T20

Circumstances have proscribed my cricket watching quite severely so far this season. I missed the first two Plunket Shield matches at the Basin for the best of reasons: we were in Canada with our new grandson (it was also a much better timezone for watching the World Cup). My sporting spectating was restricted to an NHL game between the Ottawa Senators and the Buffalo Sabres, a cacophonous experience that was the precise opposite of first-class cricket at the Basin Reserve.

 

Between Christmas and the New Year I had scheduled two days at the most beautiful ground I know, Pukekura Park, New Plymouth, but Covid caught up with me and my wife at last, so my cricket watching in the 2023/24 season thus far has consisted of three domestic T20 double-headers at the Basin Reserve. 

 

The first of these, just before Christmas, saw comfortable wins by both the men and women over Otago. The highlight of the day was 139 by 21-year-old Wellington opener Tim Robinson, the second highest score in New Zealand T20. Robinson has shown flashes of great promise, but this was the first time it all came together. For strokemaking, it evoked Martin Guptill at his best. Like Guptill in his World Cup quarter-final double hundred, Robinson was dropped before he had scored, but did not let it worry him. With Rachin Ravindra and Mohammad Abbas, Robinson comprises a batting trio that could produce sackloads of runs for Wellington and New Zealand over the next 15 years (and for franchise teams too numerous to mention, I suppose). 

 

On Saturday 13 January, Wellington’s double-header opponents were Central Districts. It was a day that produced more excitement, statistical landmarks and memories than you might reasonably expect in a season, or two—

• The second-best bowling performance in New Zealand women’s T20 cricket
• A spectacular opposition collapse, which is always fun
• A tie
• The best catch I have ever seen
• The most expensive over I have ever seen.

 

Wellington Blaze v Central Hinds

 

Despite their dominance of the competition, the Blaze have sometimes fallen short when batting first, usually to be rescued by the bowlers in general and Melie Kerr in particular. Against Central Districts, 82 for two from 15 overs turned into 109 for seven off 20. 

 

Central were cruising at 89 for three with five overs left. Perhaps it was disbelief at being on the brink of overturning the mighty Blaze, or maybe it was simply the sheer quality of Melie Kerr, but they collapsed as if Liz Truss was suddenly in charge: six wickets for nine runs. It might be added that a couple of the decisions looked dubious on the replay (there is no right of referral in domestic games, though umpires can check some things, as they did later with the catch of the century).

 

Kerr took five for 13. It would have been the best ever performance in women’s domestic T20 cricket, had it not been for her five for ten against Canterbury the previous week. She is the leading wicket taker in the competition this season, and, with four fifties, the second best runscorer after Suzie Bates. It could be that the Blaze are over-reliant on her; here she was out for 26. They miss Maddy Green, who has returned to Auckland, and Sophie Devine, who is not playing in this tournament.

 

The ninth wicket fell from the first ball of the 19th over, bowled by Xara Jetly, who celebrated with a double cartwheel. Twelve were needed from 11 balls. In came No 11 Claudia Green, none of whose previous 23 innings in this format had resulted in a double-figure score. 

 

From the first ball she faced, Green was almost caught at backward point, and almost run out as she hurtled half way down the pitch and back again. 

 

At which point Green discovered her inner Wallter Hammond. She danced down the pitch to Jetly’s next delivery, turning it into a half volley and driving it to the cover boundary. Down she came to the next ball, driving sweetly to long on for a single. From the non-striker’s end Green—the same Green who had reacted to the first ball of the over in the manner of Lance Corporal Jones—now called her partner for a sharp single when the keeper fumbled a legside wide as if there was ice in her veins. The transformation in the space of a minute from a player who couldn’t get away from the strike fast enough to one who demanded it was astonishing.

 

Down the pitch she danced again, hitting a full toss to the straight boundary to level the scores.

 

The normal rules that control the cricketing universe, having popped out for a moment, now returned and hurried to wipe up the mess. Green charged again, but this time was bowled and the game was tied. 

 

There was no super over. We don’t like them because of…you know.

 

Wellington Firebirds v Central Stags

  

What is the best catch you have ever seen? If pressed, I have always gone for Alan Ealham to dismiss Nirmal Nanan of Nottinghamshire in the Sunday League at Canterbury in 1973. The Times thought it worth the headline on its summary of the day’s games: Ealham’s catch keeps Kent at the top:

 

Nanan fell to a wonderful catch by Ealham, who ran nearly 20 yards round the long-on boundary to dive and take the ball low down, tumbling over and over.

 

Ealham was stationed near the lime tree and ran towards the sightscreen at the Nackington Road End. I’ll bet that he was also responsible for at least one of the run outs on the Nottinghamshire card that day. 

 

More recent contenders took their catches at the Basin Reserve, which is not surprising, given that is where I have watched the great majority of my cricket for the past 20 years, an era in which fielding standards have reached new heights. There was Kane Williamson’s three grasps to dismiss Angelo Mathews in 2015 that became ESPN’s worldwide play of the day. Trent Boult’s gymnastic removals of Ramdin and Rahane in 2014 and 2015. Also Logan van Beek’s successive pieces of invisible tightrope walking to defy the boundary rope in the 2020 T20 final.

 

Against Central Districts, Troy Johnson pulled off a catch that was better than any of them, the best I have seen. I was in the RA Vance Stand, right above where the catch was taken, a perfect view. In the video you see the full-length dive to take the ball coming down over the shoulder and the contortion necessary to avoid the rope, during which the ball was successfully delivered to Nick Kelly (who is therefore credited with the catch). What you don’t see is where Johnson started from—a few metres inside the circle—how much ground he had to make to reach the ball, and the fast pace at which he was moving towards the boundary rope. From the stand, there appeared to be no chance that he would get there until he did. Neither does it show how strong the wind was, more than enough to introduce an element of randomness into the flight of the ball as it fell. It was magnificent.

 

When Logan van Beek came on for the 17th over, Central Districts required 33 with six wickets left to pass Wellington’s below par 147 for eight. They were ahead, but it was still a contest.

 

No 18th over was needed. All 33 came off van Beek. I am pretty sure that I have not seen as many runs off one over before, the benchmark being 31 from Graham McKenzie’s disastrous 14-ball over in the Sunday League in 1971.

 

Van Beek’s was a mere eight deliveries, starting with a legside wide that went through to the boundary. The first legal delivery was a single to deep square leg, followed by another to deep mid-wicket. Continuing the short-ball strategy, van Beek got a next one wrong and it was called as a high wide. So far there had been eight from the over, with four to bowl.

 

The next was a slower, fuller ball that Doug Bracewell sent bouncing off the toilet block into the traffic around the Basin. In the time it took to bring out a replacement ball the umpires agreed that Wellington had had too many fielders outside the circle, and called no ball. Bracewell duly dispatched the free hit over the sightscreen. Another wait for a ball. 

 

The remaining 12 required were an administrative detail that Bracewell addressed efficiently with two legside sixes. 

 

This was the same Logan van Beek who had hit 30 off Jason Holder in a World Cup qualifier super over a few months ago. As far as I can tell, van Beek is the first to score, and be hit for, 30 or more in an over across first-class, List A and the T20 equivalent. 

 

All this was available free-to-air on TVNZ. New Zealand Cricket finds itself in the enviable position of having pay TV revenue and free-to-air exposure. In 2020 Spark (New Zealand’s leading telecommunications company) bought the rights to cricket in New Zealand for six years. However, the company was unable to obtain sufficient rights across sports, particularly for winter codes, to make its streaming sports service profitable, and pulled the plug in mid June 2023. Its cricket rights were divested to its free-to-air partner TVNZ, though Spark continues to pick up most of the tab. 

 

There is a black lining to this silver cloud. TVNZ could never hope to make a serious bid when the cricket next becomes available, which will leave New Zealand’s Sky TV as the sole bidder, unless there is an unexpected development in our small market. Sky has used this position ruthlessly of late; its recent bid for renewal of the rights to netball (a significant sport in the pay TV market here) was for about half the amount it paid for the current contract. 

 

My third day at the cricket had more disappointment for the men, who collapsed to 27 for six before partially recovering to 102 all out, a total that gave no trouble to bottom-of-the-table Northern Districts. The successive defeats cost Wellington automatic qualification to the final and the hosting rights that go with it. 

 

A seamless unbeaten 73 from Melie Kerr took the women to an easy win. They win the group and go through to the final, which will be played at Eden Park, Auckland, home of the men’s group winners.

 

A Restful Time at the Basin Reserve

 

Wellington v Auckland, Plunket Shield, Basin Reserve, 5 – 7 November 2022

Scorecard

Restful would be as good a description of this game as any. The scoring rate clung to two an over like lion cubs fearful of straying too far from their mother. I was there for the first two days. The Basin was a picture in the sunshine, but the southerly kept me in the Long Room where the main topic of conversation was whether the pies are as good as last year’s.

Wellington were put in. With spring moving into early summer, the pitch was not such a radical shade of green, official rather than provisional, if you will. The movement it provided was not extravagant, but was constant. I have not, for a long time, seen the ball pass the outside edge as often as it did on the first day. It was this that explains the slow scoring, provoking the batsmen into an abundance of caution. The pitch was not particularly slow, with good carry through to the keeper.

Auckland’s left-arm opening bowler Ben Lister was unlucky to take only the wicket of Georgeson. On another day he could have had five or six, but might his response to constantly beating the bat without finding the edge have been to pitch it up a fraction more?

Tom Blundell was, yet again, top scorer. He came in at 102 for four, not a crisis, but the innings was in need of taking more exercise and being put on a better diet. Troy Johnson, with 42, was the only other Wellington batter to get more than 20. Somebody said that Johnson had scratched about and looked out of form, but it takes a decent player to scratch about for three hours.

The wickets were shared around the Auckland attack, including two for off-spinner Will Somerville, who is the Flying Dutchman of New Zealand cricket, doomed to sail the Seven Seas forever and never see home, as a test player at least. All six of his test appearances have been in the heat and dust, and he may get the call to go to Pakistan over the New Year. Look at Somerville and the way the selectors have treated Jeetan and Ajaz Patel over the years and you might conclude that in New Zealand we treat dogs better than we do spinners.

Auckland’s first innings was, in many respects, a copy of Wellington’s. Solia was the dogged presence at the top of the order, and Ben Horne the keeper who bolstered the innings at No 6. But the chorus was more vocal for the visitors, with 44 from George Worker (a member of the Aptly-named XI, along with Boycott and PJ Hacker of Notts, among others) and a tenth-wicket partnership of 55, so though it looked much the same, a lead of 124 was the outcome.

The pace was just as stately. It was as if Derek Shackleton was bowling at one end and Tom Cartwright at the other. It was 1969 all over again, cricket with Nixon in the White House and Harold Wilson in Downing Street. I found it calming.

There was a short flurry of excitement when, after 96 overs Auckland found themselves 44 short of the second bonus point, available for the first 110 overs of the first innings. Horne was provoked into a temporary abandonment of pacifism and 250 was reached in just eight overs, after which tranquillity was restored, with just nine from the next seven overs.

In my absence on the third day, Wellington were shot out for 132, leaving Auckland with just seven for victory. Lister was more successful in locating the edge of the bat, with four wickets, and Somerville took three more.

And that is it for me and the Plunket Shield for this season. Yes, in the equivalent of early May I have seen all the domestic first-class cricket available to me in 2022/23. With two tests at the Basin when the competition resumes next year, Wellington’s home fixtures are all scheduled before Christmas. In fact, with India using the ground for practice ahead of a T20 at the Cake Tin, the fourth (and final) “home” game was in Palmerston North, two-and-a-half hours away and not in Wellington at all. Yet Fitzherbert Park is an appropriate alternative to the Basin in that it is the only other ground I know of on which the prevailing weather is a gale sufficiently strong to gather up small dogs and children and deposit them in neighbouring streets.  

Shorter forms of the game dominate the fixture list for the next couple of months.

 

 

 

The 2021/22 Season in New Zealand So Far

The 2021/2 Plunket Shield began with the unexpected but glorious distinction of being the domestic first-class competition of the World Test Match Champions. As the world’s cricketing media sought to account for this unlikely turn of events, the strength of New Zealand’s domestic game was cited by many as a significant factor, particularly the pitches that are, we learn from the overseas press, balanced perfectly between bat and ball.

Well, I’m as surprised as you are. We devotees of the Plunket Shield (we are a select band) are puzzled that a competition consisting (in normal times)  of eight matches a team (not enough for a double round-robin), played in the season’s dawn and dusk, should have propelled us to the summit. It is like finding that your loved but unexceptional child Wolfgang Amadeus is a fair piano player. I should not be surprised. Almost everything that I read about New Zealand in the foreign media is wildly inaccurate. 

But the Plunket Shield is still something to be treasured, especially in these times. This season started with only four of New Zealand’s six cricketing provinces able to participate, Auckland and the bigger part of Northern Districts being in lockdown. 

In the Basin Reserve’s Long Room we were all masked, even though Wellington remained Covid-free. I am astonished, when I look at sports fixtures elsewhere in the world, that hardly anybody is wearing a mask. How have those who find a small square of cloth such a challenge coped all these years with trousers, not to mention the myriad challenges that  underwear brings? New Zealanders, much more than most people, believe that the common good is a common responsibility. As I write, fifty people have died from COVID-19 in New Zealand since the whole thing kicked off (which does not stop people in places with thousands and thousands dead telling us how we are getting it wrong).

Wellington v Otago, Plunket Shield, Basin Reserve, 23-26 October 2021

The Basin Reserve will be hosting international cricket when the Plunket Shield concludes next February and March, so Wellington’s four home games were done with by mid-November. So this account represents not just the start, but also the totality of my domestic first-class spectating for this season. 

Wellington were without Jimmy Neesham and Devon Conway, both at the T20 World Cup. Hamish Bennett has given up red-ball cricket so as to extend his career in the national limited-overs teams. Wellington will miss him, but have found a replacement in Nathan Smith, a 23-year-old all-rounder who has represented the national Under-19 and A sides. Smith made a fine start against his old team, trapping Hamish Rutherford lbw with his second ball. Rutherford offered no shot. As ever I invoked the words that the great Arthur Jepson would deliver as he raised the finger in such circumstances: “there’s a reason why tha’s got a bat in thy ‘and lad”.

Smith continued to impress, with two more wickets in the first innings and six in the second. He is skiddy and slippery, at a decent pace too. 

Wickets fell regularly. The biggest partnership of the innings was 49 for the seventh wicket. This naturally raises the question of the pitch, which was the Basin’s traditional first-day green, but with a yellow tinge down the middle, as if to profess its love for Norwich City. Otago’s 207 was the highest total of the match, the difference between that and the lowest being only 27, so the pitch was at least consistent in its capriciousness, which was no more than might be expected of the early season in a temperate climate. 

This being the context, a target of 193 was an anxious one for the home supporters, the more so when Rachin Ravindra went off holding his arm gingerly, having been hit. He missed a good deal of last season with a shoulder injury so we feared a repeat. Happily no damage was done, and has since made his test debut in the two tests in India, saving New Zealand from defeat in the first test by blocking for the last 90 minutes of the match and taking the catch that completed Ajaz Patel’s miraculous ten-wicket haul in the second. Regular readers will know that I have been tipping Ravindra for success for a while, though that requires no more insight than predicting that the sun will rise in the east tomorrow. Now we know that he has the temperament as well as the talent.

The most memorable moment of the match was Luke Georgeson’s catch at third man off Rutherford’s ramped cut in the second innings. The ball went towards the boundary in a flat arc. Georgeson had to make a fair distance backwards before diving to take a one-handed, over-the-shoulder catch, always aware of the proximity of the boundary. This initiated a discussion among the stalwarts of the Long Room about the best catch seen at the Basin. The consensus was for  Mayu Pasupati’s full-length dive in the 50-over final in 2000, though Trent Boult has multiple entries in for consideration, as CricInfo has recorded. Georgeson’s was at least the equal of any of them. 

Rutherford was seventh out, having raised then dashed my hopes of seeing an opener carrying his bat through a first-class innings. A man needs an ambition in his declining years. 

Throughout the game in the Long Room there was an empty chair with a reserved sign on it in the name of Fred Goodall, New Zealand’s most famous pre-Bowden umpire, mostly for being body checked by Colin Croft. Fred had passed away a week or so before. He was a regular attender right up to the end of last season, despite declining health. On the first morning, Otago’s top three were all out leg-before, as fitting a tribute to Fred as could be. 

Wellington v Canterbury, Plunket Shield, Basin Reserve, 31 October-3 November 2021

This fixture was scheduled to be against the quarantined Northern Districts, so Canterbury, unable to host Auckland, filled in, so we had successive first-class matches between the same teams on the same ground. Canterbury won both resoundingly, their Shield-winning form continuing from last season. 

Five wickets fell in the first session after Canterbury were put in by Michael Bracewell, and it seemed that we were in for a repeat of the moderate scores of the Otago game. But none followed between lunch and tea as Canterbury took control. It was a match in which class told, first in the form of Henry Nicholls, who made 97 while he second-highest score from either top six in the first innings was 26. Nicholls is Mr Imperturbable, unfazed by what is happening at the other end or by any ball except the one he is about to face. 

There was a strong performance from the bottom half of the Canterbury order, most notably from keeper Cam Fletcher, who made 110. Fletcher kept beautifully too, standing up impeccably to the sharp medium pace of Will Williams. Tom Blundell played here before heading off to India as successor to BJ Watling as the national team’s custodian (a term worthy of rehabilitation). During this first phase of the Plunket Shield I also saw Max Chu of Otago (another recent centurion) and Wellington’s reserve Callum McLachlan. Of the four, Blundell was the least impressive with the gloves. He will need to improve, or score a stack of runs, or both to keep his place. 

A lead of 218 was not enough to tempt Canterbury to enforce the follow on. Instead, Tom Latham’s unbeaten 127 was the innings of the season so far, and gave context to the challenges that the pitch presented to those of lesser ability. Ravindra’s second-innings 70 approached its quality, and constituted not far off half of Wellington’s second innings.

Wellington v Canterbury, Plunket Shield, Basin Reserve, 7-9 November 2021

An hour or so into the first day, most of the players on the field dived to the ground and lay flat, reminiscent of that photo of Lord’s during World War Two when a doodlebug cut out above them. Here, it was bees. There was a story on the radio the other day about the tradition of telling bees the news. PL Travers wrote about her aunt doing this. “ ‘I have to tell you,’ she said, formally, ‘that King George V is dead. You may be sorry, but I am not. He was not an interesting man.’ ” I’m sure that the bees were interested in the state of the Basin Reserve pitch. Someone should have faced them and said “Bees, it’s another one in which you could hide an emerald in plain sight, but batting of quality can still produce runs, and that will decide the game”.

I was present only for the first day of this one, but, in terms of wickets down  that constituted almost half the match. With the test players gone, it was Canterbury’s opener Ken McClure who stepped up, with 130, four fewer than Wellington managed in their first innings, and 15 more than their second. 

The fourth match of the series, against Central Districts, was during the working week, so I didn’t get to any of it. For the first time this season Wellington scaled the heady heights of 200, and in both innings, but Central’s first-innings lead of 120 was the foundation of a seven-wicket victory. 

Wellington v Otago, 50 overs, Basin Reserve, 1 December 2021

It was something of a relief for us Wellington folk to send the Plunket Shield into summer hibernation and to turn to the shorter forms. The 50-over Ford Trophy began with another visit from Otago, who put Wellington in. This year the longer shorter form is mixed in with the T20, As every match in the latter is on TV, they have first call on the pitches in the centre of the block, so as to be aligned with the camera towers. Thus the Ford Trophy finds itself in the cheap seats at the edge, where the pitches have a shifty countenance, coloured like a damaged car with a hasty respray. This is no bad thing as it produces a balance between bat and ball and a fuller test of skills that is much preferable to a 370 v 370 slugfest. This game was a fine example. 

Here, Wellington reached 255, more than looked likely for much of the innings, thanks to some effective hitting from Nathan Smith in the final overs. Otago’s slow bowlers were their most effective. Left-arm wrist spinner Michael Rippon took four for 41 while Anaru Kitchen conceded only 26 from his ten overs. 

So Michael Bracewell’s early exit from the field after a blow on the fingers seemed decisive, depriving Wellington of ten overs of slow stuff (a better representation of Bracewell’s oeuvre than “spin”). Bracewell returned to the field periodically, unsuccessfully trying to persuade the umpires that the binding on his hand would not assist his bowling, the cricketing equivalent of claiming that the Norwegian Blue remained sentient. 

For the greater part of their innings it seemed that Otago were coasting it, led by Neil Broom’s 72. Broom has reached that stage when people ask if the Broom playing today is the son, or maybe grandson, of the former Otago player Neil Broom, but it is still the original, accumulating away in the cause of the South. When he was fifth out Otago had to score 54 to win in ten overs. As so often, it was a run out that undid them, as Rippon sold non-striker Kitchen a dummy of which any Otago outside half might have been proud. Jakob Bhula, slow bowling stand-in for Bracewell, did a fine job in the final phase with five overs for just 19 as Wellington picked the match from Otago’s pocket. 

Wellington v Otago, 50 overs, Basin Reserve, 21 December 2021

The Ford Trophy has a veneer of equity about it, with each province playing all the others twice. However, eccentricity lies underneath. In each pair of fixtures, the same side is at home for both games. This is supposed to be cost-saving, with two matches in three days. Three weeks separated the two fixtures between Wellington and Otago, yet  the southerners were asked to make the long journey to the capital once more, when a reversal of venues would have meant that each team played five at home and five away. 

It was an enjoyable day in the sun, without there being much of note to report. Wellington made 333 with solid contributions from most of the batters led by the increasingly impressive Troy Johnson with 88. Otago lost wickets regularly and soon fell irredeemably behind the required rate. I left early, something I rarely do out of fear of missing the extraordinary, but nothing of that nature occurred in my absence. 

To finish this round up of the first half of the season, four T20 games.

Wellington v Central Districts, T20, Basin Reserve, 5 December 2021 Women Men 

Wellington v Canterbury, T20, Basin Reserve, 19 December 2021

Women Men  

New Zealand Cricket continues its admirable policy of making every match day a double header, with a women’s and a men’s game. The inclusion of the women widens considerably the range of approaches and skills to be seen, a pleasing degree of aestheticism replacing an over-reliance on power.

Regular readers will know that, for several seasons now, Amelia Kerr’s legspin bowling has been one of the great pleasures of my cricket watching. To this she has added consistent and heavy scoring. Her lowest score in the five games so far is 42, the only time she has fallen short of a half century, which goes some way to explaining why Wellington are the only team with an unbeaten record at the halfway stage. 

The same cannot be said for the men. The chances of a home final as top-placed team in the round robin are remote, with just two wins from five. 

We begin 2022 with a 50-over game on New Year’s Day; I can’t think of a better way.